Coil Quest Over (or just postponed?)

[Orin Eman]

For anyone interested in HV diode specs, visit the following:

http://www.hvca.com

There was some discussion on sci.electronics.design recently.
(BTW, they claim free samples...)

> P.S. For those who've never worked with HV diodes, what's going on here
> is that say for an individual one that's good for a rev. breakdown of
> say 10KV, because it's actually made up of scads of individual diode
> junctions inside, it takes maybe 8-12V to forward bias such a critter.
> Hence, on a normal ohmmeter, even with a "diode" setting, the applied
> voltage (God, I HOPE so!) isn't sufficient to forward bias the diode and
> make it come to life. Now, typically when these diodes are used to
> isolate a portion of the HV circuit, like joining two coils together to
> form a redundant pair (which is why in XAviation we know about these
> things), several, up to maybe half-dozen are strung in series to provide
> the 40-60KV protection that's needed against the IGN spike. Hence, if
> you put 6 of em in series, it can take up to 60-80V to forward bias the
> stack. That's where Clare (also an XA guy, BTW) is comin from. Heh.